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Month: May 2012

Today I am going to enjoy my walk to my French class and I will not think about the wind whipping my hair in my face and across my glasses I will walk with hair in my face and just be fine about it.

Today I am just going to walk at a leisurely pace enjoying the view, watching all the people hurrying to work or play. I will not get caught up in their hustle but stay calm and free.

Today I will not be bothered by those around me who walk while asleep, it is often hard to watch, today I will bless each of them along the way.

Today I will listen to every bird I hear singing to me and I will call out, little bird, little bird in response. (you have to know me to understand this one, just know it’s fun)

Today I will just take care of a few pressing things rather than let them turn into have to and why did I wait. I am just going to do it, whatever it is!

Today I will walk with thankfulness understanding I am walking on my own legs, led by my own will living my life, Praise God!

Today I will be present in class, and present with my daughter after class, and then present with my self when I am alone again.

Today I will watch the sky, see the sun watch the clouds and be very happy about it.

Today I will ignore my family’s inability to understand me and then quit expecting them to.(Should have thought about this years ago)

Today I will not worry about my kids, or my grandson, today I will practice knowing everything is under control. (probably not mine)

Today I will love everyone and everything, (from a distance)

Today I am just going to go through the day, just to allow it to unfold, just to be ok with it.

Today at some point, maybe after finishing this, I am going to go and lie down on my floor facing the sun, eyes closed, and hope like Sami that someone will come by and rub my tummy. Knowing him he will just walk across it on his way back to his chair, where he will wait for someone to come by and rub his belly. Long live the king!

Bored out of my mind I went for a walk under what looked like a sky getting ready to blow. I couldn’t help it when it is this grey and I am in a certain state of mind being outside is the only answer, rain or not. Out the door I went.

I love being outside when it’s like this because there are very few people out and about. You feel even in the middle of a busy downtown like you are the only person in the world. This is also why I love New York City on a Sunday morning, no one on the roads. Even the busiest cities in the world have their quiet times.

Today it’s an off and on rain. The kind of rain that used to piss me off because I didn’t want to get wet, mess my hair, or have wet feet. Back in the day growing up in Florida it was blast playing in the rain. It didn’t last long and usually cooled everything for a minute or two. It also made some awesome puddles to jump in. There is an element of the sweet innocent child I once was in that state of rainy cloudy loneliness.

There were others who had the same idea as I had, we nod as we silently pass each other. I walk by the church as the bells go off and a alleluia chorus begins serenading us from above. It was other worldly. It began to rain harder when I hit the park. I spied a huge tree and went for it. I stood under its large branches waiting it out watching others heads down just braving the rush of water.

It was so interesting how it felt just to be standing outside all around me was blowing rain and I was hiding under that tree. It reminded me of when I lived in the woods and we played a game as we walked the unpaved country roads, if you heard a car you had to head into the woods so as not to get caught. It was exciting to crouch down and watch the car go by. I found myself wanting to hide around the side of the tree as a person appeared on the path just as I did in the woods. Just like in the woods I didn’t want to be seen. So I did, I walked around the tree as the other person walked around on the other side. They never saw me. Just like that the little girl I once was I recognized the game of being alone. I am well used to this game.

The rain lessens for a moment and I walk further done the trail and there is the water’s edge where a cool tree long ago fell but continued to grow. I hid there so I could watch the ducks at the edge. Ducks do not trust anything that moves fast so I move slowly so I can watch and then every animal in that area became really interested in me. The ducks swam in place watching me, the squirrel came around the side of the tree and these other birds were darting back and forth. I imagine a huge number of nests are hidden in those cattails.

Rain lessens again and I head out. The path is clear of people and its like I have the whole town to myself again. I walk through the park and head towards my building. The emptiness of the world is reflected in the pond found deep within me. Still waters that run ever so deep and there is wisdom. This wisdom of mine so cleverly hidden by the lotus flowers covering the surface of my inner waters. Just like curtains holding back prying eyes. Or better yet like soil protecting my next new seed.

I am to be alone for now and I will do it like someone filled by a great lake. Sometimes I will rise up and overflow my banks consumed by rivers of trapped grief. Sometimes I will not move a ripple held in reverence of the present moment. Sometimes I will rage and throw myself around rattling the cages of my mind destroying falsehoods and fake Gods. And sometimes I will play and send my waves high into the sky searching to reach my maker. I will throw myself into his arms reaching higher and higher with my waves tall like huge sky scrapers soaring into the heavens.But for now my waters are still and covered by flowers, they conceal the who I am, for now!

I like walking in the rain. Today it was my meditation, it was my communion, it was a gift.

I walk to my French class here just like I did in Sancerre, France. In Sancerre it was a quite walk slowly lumbering through a sleepy petite ville. I rarely saw anyone if class was in the morning and I walked back in the dark if my class was in the afternoon. It was all very French, very quite, and very small. Here in the states I am in a bigger town and I walk to my morning class through the very busy downtown area. I walk from where I live on one side to the other where the school is located.

This is a busy and vibrant downtown where unlike the suburbs everything is happening where we all can watch. I walk each day with all the people dressed in their suits all walking with speed, (nothing at all like New York City they know how to walk), most plugged into a device and swinging a bag. Others who are down on their luck are sitting on corners, some hiding while others want some money, lots are just talking to themselves.

There are people dropping kids off at school and childcare, lots of shoppers and farmers market workers, so many Target employees. Most people are busy on the phone. There are people who never look up. Some people just look too much. There are some people who are lost looking up trying to figure out which way to go and then the brave who just come up to you and ask. I see more bars than stores, one street for sex shops, one for fine dining one for art galleries. There is a high-end department store, a regular department store and a discount store. Lots of hotels, a cinema, orchestra hall and a theater or two.

I love to watch while I walk.

I watch you smoke, spit, lots of spitting, yell, sing, walk, run, eat, more spitting, lots of loud phone discussions for us all to share in, a born again saving souls on one corner and a man condemning the rest of us on the other. I watch you wait for the bus, hail a cab, walk out in the street barely miss being hit. I watch you thinking I watch you happy and it’s hard to watch the desperate.

Some of you smile, some frown, some are pretty darn mad, some really too happy, some friendly some not so friendly and some best left alone. Some are fat, some are thin, some need to eat a hamburger, some need to take a bath, brush their teeth, some need to check the mirror one more time, some need bigger clothes, some smaller, (much more need bigger), some walk with assurance, some hoping they don’t get hit.

The worst are the ones yelling at their kids, pulling on their arms, pushing them from behind, no better are the woman yelling at their men and the men yelling at their women and others yelling at each other. Some push through the crowd, others let you by, some hold doors, some slam doors.

40 minutes later I am at my last light, take a left turn and I’m at the school. Hit the buzzer and I am inside. Two hours later walking home I do it again I watch everyone all the way back.

Travel enough, live long enough and you will learn people are pretty much the same the world over, I just wish everyone could figure this out. You can learn a lot watching a crowd.

Like this:

I find one of the most difficult things for me to do in this stage is to make a decision. To make a commitment in any direction immediately puts me on my defensive. I feel like I have done nothing lately but make mistakes. While trying to walk in wisdom I see that I am often practicing avoidance. Underneath the everything is all right exterior is my interior way to full of indecision. What do I want?

But that is exterior talk. Down deep within me is the answer I seek. No one really wants to walk through life being told what to do and how to do it. That comes later after we are broken. When we are children we desire to explore and to see for ourselves even if we end up with scrapped knees. But if our knees get scrapped too raw we will stop seeking and look for safety especially after our scrapped knees turn bloody. When we do not have a balance between my way and your way believe me someones knees are getting bloody.

Once that happens one will often say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, and lose the last piece of I want. Life moves from an outward get what you want life to an interior life masked by smiles driven by hidden motives. There is no real power in teaching everyone what you want is what they want, no really, I was thinking take out food too, no really I was hoping we would go out, again, no really I was needing some company, no really I want another child…

You talk to someone, do you know who you are speaking with? Do you see through their hidden motives? Saying “everyone does it”, leads us in their phrasing to see things their way. They lead us with their smell, “you smell great” it draws us their way, they lure us with their lies, “no really you are the only one”, and without even being aware of it we are being led by somebody’s hidden motives. Really, if you are not doing what you desire to do, you might find you are living someones life other than your own.

I walk past these young people doing ‘charity’ work, you have seen them standing at street corners waiting to accost you as you approach, once you recognize them by their clipboard of signatures and hopeful grins, you cross blocks to avoid them. Yesterday I look up and I am caught, young girls with clipboard smiles, I say “I am just passing through”, she said, defensively “all I said was hi!”. I laughed. She said something shitty, under her breath,(the young), I turn around, she says, “oh you want to talk now” I laughed again, hidden motives! It’s not me she wants to talk to. It’s whoever put her on a street corner holding a clip board with a fake smile and words filled with hidden motives.

Hidden motives have kept me stuck in time and space. It is not that I cannot move on it is that underneath the strong exterior is the little girl still waiting for some prince charming to come along and make everything better. Rescue me damn it! Hidden motives must be dug through for truth and fear. What holds us back keeps us from life’s best. Real life is filled with trials and tribulations and it’s ok to make mistakes, she says loudly to herself. I take slow steps forward and what holds me in place our the hidden motives deeply embedded inside me but once looked at by my clear eyes of truth they have begun to slowly untangle.

I went to lunch today at my usual place where I am known but no one bothers me. I am after all playing the role of a recluse. So I sit with my glass of wine with my journal open doing my writing. It’s quiet, no ones pays any attention to me. As usual, this has been going on since France and those are the French.

I am sitting there and I may add it’s a mostly a queer place which of course is why I am there, all straight chicks love to go to gay hangouts, safer, anyway so I am sitting there having lunch doing my writing and in walks an old woman, in her 80’s.

She comes in and everyone knows her name, her name is Grace. She sits down and they get her coffee and she starts looking around, as everyone had called her by name I did the same and she got up and came over and sat with me. We started talking you know as women do…

She had an interesting life. She had an invalid for a father and told her mother she was not marrying to be someone’s slave so she was heading out and she joined the foreign service and spent her life over seas, she never married choosing to be alone. So I said to her, ” Grace how do you do it, stay alone all the time”, she told me she has always been alone so she always goes out to be around people. I told her it was hard for me after so many years to be so alone.

This is what she said, all of her family is dead now, her mother father brothers, she has no one left but a cousin she rarely sees, her phone never rings, she is friends with her mailman and walks through the park when the weather is nice. So she told me I am not to say that I was lonely any more, she said if I have family then I am not alone, I tear up while I write this because this woman has been living alone all her life and is alone in the twilight of her life and she is fine but she also knew that not having a husband or children would leave her alone at some point but she pointed out I was not alone, even though I am alone I am not alone because they are out there sometimes thinking of me.

There is a lot of waiting in life. Just as it takes 9 months to create a new life and a woman will count each day and in her last trimester it’s all about the waiting waiting waiting. Exchanging emails with a new beau waiting waiting waiting. A phone call about a job, a kind word when you are lonely, standing in line anywhere, waiting waiting waiting.

I think about the characters in the bible that had to wait so long to get anything done, wander through the desert for 40 years, lots of waiting, 30 years to be king lots of waiting, you’ll have a child one day and when you are old, waiting waiting waiting.

I have to keep these things in mind as I sit in the waiting room of my life, waiting waiting waiting. My problem arrives when my natural-born self, my mother’s daughter, the take care of everything, world on my shoulders, is expected to sit back and watch things play out. No, not me I asserted my will upon the Universe. I was constantly bargaining with God about the kids, about where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. I now realize that I thought I was at a crossroads but the reality is I am at a way station. I am not waiting for anything. There is nothing to wait for. So my life is on pause, waiting waiting waiting.

In the world of Divine Spiritual Wisdom that I was taught there are 2 ways to go through life, 1. Work to co-create what it is you desire, keeping in mind, thy will be done, 2. Let go and let God knowing that everything is God’s will, (please do not get hung up on the word God, it’s easier to write than Creator of the universe, and all the new age ways to say ‘that’).

I used number 1 for most of my life, I imposed my will, sent my energy out there and asked to be guided, a lifetime habit of being in charge of my life starting at such a young age. Ahh youth!

I have tried lately to keep with the mantra that God (the universal energies, see what I mean) knows me better than I know myself and as I believe, we are here to tend to specific issues for our spiritual growth. So my pushing my way through life has gotten very difficult and is probably my next assignment to conquer. You mean you are waiting for me to let go! That’s what I am waiting for? Hmmmm

As I have said before my eldest son is bipolar and I have directed my will into him and his family. I now know I can only ask, it’s God’s will what is going to happen, very difficult, I want to save him, them, everyone. But alas control is such a ridiculous concept, self perceived and unreal. I have to pray and let go, hard hard hard, I keep waiting for him to do the right thing, I want him to do the right thing, why will he not. I want his wife to do the right thing, hard hard hard, Waiting waiting waiting!!!!!!!!

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. The only way through this part of my life is waiting, time heals all things, or my new favorite line, everything always works out in the end so if it isn’t working out it’s not the end yet, awesome, and right from God’s mouth to my ear. Waiting waiting waiting for God.

This ends up being an incorrect phrase. The universe knows what I need, what my son needs, I have no need to sit in a panic, worry myself grey, (oops already did that), or give it another irrational moment. I am waiting but it is not a bad thing. My will has gotten me through some very rough years. I used my will to find money for food for the kids, to keep relationships going, to create the car I wanted and the house I needed.

But not anymore, it’s about waiting now. Not waiting in a bad way like stuck on my butt, but, 🙂 waiting to see where it all leads. I have too much wisdom to doubt the process anymore. I see, my eyes are open, and when I know it is time I will use my will again for what ever and when ever and where ever I am called to go or do. Once I know then I will

and when I do you can bet things will change. Power people it is all in the mind! Until then it’s a waiting game and waiting is the hardest part.

Are you angry? I hate that sentence it makes me so mad. Or does it make me angry? According to the web, I searched through images for the word mad, this is someone mad.

I agree that person looks mad but he clearly is not mad. Not the kind of mad people keep saying I am, you are always so mad. But to me it feels like I am angry. Like thisPeople keep getting in my way disturbing my peace, yup that’s a more accurate image to the angry I often feel. (Most cats can barely keep this look off their faces, stupid humans everywhere)

To be fair I grew up in angry world and saw a lot of this.

Some directed at kids, some directed at wife’s, husbands, some directed at neighbors, some directed at the sky. Someone yelling at, someone yelling to…

Of course that kind of ingrained passion sure made me a fierce mother and people never stepped in between me and my kids but some tried and they saw this!

Like many people and I would dare say most of us, deal with a level of inner frustration about life and life’s circumstances. We each put up with a lot. Somethings are very annoying! Family stuff can sure be annoying but we are loyal to each other even in anger. A good family that is….But there has to be an end to what any human has to put up with or deal with. We are after all in charge of our world, even if only in our heads. We can choose what to do, what to believe, what to say, and how to act. We can investigate things and find out the truth for ourselves. We must be our own boss and not allow ourselves to be pushed around until it’s to late and they let some monster out. That’s kind of how I looked when they wanted to put my grandson on medication or call him ‘special’. “He’s special all right he especially needs you to get out of his way and quit…” ok I need to simmer down so this monster doesn’t appear. I want to get this blog done. It’s tasking so long it’s making me mad!

So while I am contemplating just how angry I am realizing my anger really has simply masked my pain. I wasn’t so angry as I was sad, so sad it made a young girl very mad. I may have been angry a large part of my life hiding the pain I couldn’t understand but I thank the Lord I never got mad

at least not too mad!

By the way my son keeps talking about angry birds, does he meanthis! Here’s looking at you angry bird!